It should not be news to anyone that humanity finds itself in a time of great depravity…
Today, world super powers find themselves on the brink of an economic collapse of their own making. Furthermore, world food shortages leave millions of poor in danger of starvation, climate change threatens to disrupt ecosystems and increase natural disasters, the gap between the worlds rich and poor continues to grow, marking the failure of both capitalist and communist prescriptions for this problem, armed conflicts take the lives of hundreds of innocents daily, and epidemics such as HIV/AIDS ravage the developing world…
And all that is a rather sterile way to mention that in our world genocides occur in full view of everyone and nobody does a damn thing about it, armies kidnap children and force them to be soldiers often making family members their first victims, rape is used as a systematic form of terror by these same armies, our world is being polluted beyond return while oil corporations are making record profits, our government backs authoritarian regimes that are pro US rather than democracies that are not pro US…and on and on.
This is not to mention the depression, anxiety, and addiction that even those in the best of circumstances face. Many are so used to living with these problems that they seem to be the norm. There doesn’t seem to be any other life than broken homes, eroded communities, loneliness, and the endless search for meaningful relationships. If you feel happy about your life and as though these things do not apply to your reality, then I would venture to guess you are probably quite distracted by a hedonistic mass consumption regiment of endless shopping, constant self medicating (either through drugs, alcohol, or prescription medication), and are probably barricaded in some rich homogeneous enclave like Orange County.
Many believe that spirituality alone cannot be a remedy for these problems. Most are convinced that the answers will come through some political or economic system or another. Others may go as far as to say that these problems are the fault of the people who are stricken by them. Some believe that the purpose of spirituality is to allow us peace in any circumstance good or bad. Some others believe that they are prosperous and safe because they are faithfully religious. For many these problems are so far away that their existence hardly comes to their attention and when they do they are sure to pray about it and quickly forget.
There is however a growing number of people who believe that the only solution to these problems is a revolutionary shift in consciousness, rooted in spirituality, and measured by life change, not adoption of any religious or political system. It is easy not to feel responsible when it is a political debate. I believe there are many, many people who understand this idea and want to move toward a deeper spirituality because they want to see a change in the world however are failing to come to grips with the radical life changes that will undoubtedly come with such a change.
There are many internal and external influences which are responsible for our present state of consciousness which the philosopher Alain Badiou accurately describes as a “nihilistic collective suicide.” By ‘external’ I mean those systematic societal mechanisms which act on us in such a way as to indoctrinate, subdue, and/or seduce our consciousness. Conversely, the ‘internal’ are those appetites or psychological mechanisms through which we ourselves ignore or drown out our consciousness.
Once again, it is not that none of us wish to move toward a more radical spiritual existence. My hope then is not to convince people that this is necessary it is to explore the implications of moving in such a direction and to show what the first steps must be in order that with a sort of ‘collective security’ those who know what God wants from us will do it…together.
